“For He has appointed us able ministers of a New Covenant, not of written laws, but of the Spirit. For the letter of the law killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.” (2 Cor. 3:6)
For those within the American Christian community who still have a problem with correlations made between Christianity and Indigenous spiritual traditions, don’t be so quick as to judge. First Nations people are representative of the earlier Noahic Covenant, which not only remains contractually binding upon its adherents, but foundational to both the Mosaic and Christian covenant. Unfortunately, in making comparisons, may Christians often reach conclusions that are ill-informed, while at the same time presuming a religious superiority which is rarely deserved, while their hubris and hypocrisy serving as a stumbling block for many. As the Lord sayeth: Woe to you teachers of the Law; you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men. You yourselves have not entered in, nor do you allow those who are entering from doing so. (Matt. 23:13) And left with little choice but to turn to their own understanding, seekers, even Christian seekers, continue to struggle in discerning right from wrong, fact from fiction, faith from religion, and the true path from that of a myriad of others.
In retrospect, I offer a personal reflection from the annals of Native American (Christian) history. In the words of Andele Martinez: “Under a sense of God’s pardoning love and redeeming grace, there came to me a sense of right and wrong, and what was real in religion and what was mere pretense.” For those of us that are attentive, let us cut to the chase; not all Christian expressions, theologies, or polities produce that which God hath purposed.–The spiritual transformation of the individual into the image and likeness of Christ.
*Angelo Martinez (–1953). Captured as a boy by the Apache, later traded to the Kiowa and adopted by Heap O’ Bears, Andele grew to adulthood as a Kiowa warrior, before eventually becoming a Methodist minister. He and his kinsman Kicking Bear are credited with being directly responsible for bringing Methodist Christianity to the Kiowa.
CoupStick Chaplain 